The sweet smell of eucalyptus like winter
wreaths, bags of cotton balls,
popsicle frames filled with tiny watercolors,
menageried elephants trumpeting on the shelf,
the Victorian dollhouse we painted last summer
Coke-bottle flower vases full of plastic stems,
and plastic petals, bits of cut up hemp string
after she taught me to knot macramé on that rug,
bowlfuls of wooden beads and glass pearls
waiting to be woven, strung, or embroidered--
near bloodied walls, where he raped her
where he took her cash and discarded her
dead on the linoleum floor
a knotted scrap of hemp
